Nigeria’s headline inflation rate fell to 23.71 per cent in April 2025, down from 24.23 per cent in March 2025, according to new statistics issued by the National Bureau of Statistics.
This signifies a 0.52 percentage point decrease from last month, suggesting a more gradual increase in the overall price level of goods and services across the country.
The relaxation aligns with a major revision to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), following the NBS’s completion of a long-anticipated rebasing of the CPI structure.
The rebasing replaces out-of-date reference periods from 2009, putting the CPI in line with current economic conditions.
According to the Bureau, “Rebasing aligns the price and weight reference periods with the current economic environment, ensuring methodological accuracy, updating the composition of the goods and services basket, revising item weights, and incorporating necessary improvements.”
The newly updated CPI now uses 2024 as the price reference year (base year) and 2023 as the weight reference period. It covers 934 product varieties across 13 divisions under the international COICOP 2018 classification framework.
Month-on-month, the inflation rate in April stood at 1.86 per cent, significantly lower than March figure of 3.90 per cent
“This means that in April 2025, the rate of increase in the average price level is lower than the rate of increase in the average price level in March 2025,” the NBS noted.
The CPI for April stood at 119.52 points, representing a 2.18-point increase from the previous month.
The latest CPI data comes ahead of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting slated for May 19 and 20, 2025.
Recall that Nigeria’s inflation rose to 24.23 per cent in March for the first time after the CPI rebase in January 2025.
In February, the CBN MPC paused interest rate hikes after inflation dropped.
